Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin took to Twitter last week to both praise and defend his country’s gun-toting space robot, FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research).
“Robot platform FEDOR showed shooting skills with two hands,” he wrote, as translated by the Independent.
“We are not creating a Terminator, but artificial intelligence that will be of great practical significance in various fields,” he added.
In Rogozin’s defense, gun slinging ain’t the only skill in FEDOR’s repertoire. Initially developed as a rescue robot, engineers have also trained FEDOR to screw in light bulbs, use keys, and drive cars.
But despite Rogozin’s statement, the video posted online emphasizes the machine’s military applications.
In the video, which begins with a robotic tank obliterating targets with a light machine gun and explosives, FEDOR is shown dual-wielding pistols and knocking out targets with ease. Rogozin took to Facebook to insist that the task was simply a demonstration of FEDOR’s dexterity and decision-making algorithms.
Русские боевые роботы – парни с железным характером @fpi_russia pic.twitter.com/qbflvn5HFy
— Дмитрий Рогозин (@Rogozin) April 14, 2017
After two-and-a-half years of development, FEDOR made headlines in 2016 by power-drilling into a pile of cinder blocks. At that time Russia announced plans to send the humanoid robot to the International Space Station to assist astronauts by 2021. Some day FEDOR is expected to work in environments that are deemed too dangerous for humans.
FEDOR won’t be the first robotic astronaut in space and it won’t likely be the last. It will follow in the footsteps of Russia’s SAR-400 and SAR-4001, the United States’ Robonaut and Robonaut 2, Germany’s AILA, and China’s Xiaotian. NASA is also developing an advanced astrobot called Valkyrie, which the agency hopes will help construct Martian colonies prior to manned missions. Meanwhile, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is researching small construction robots for colonizing Mars.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.